Psychology Research Oral Presentation

Hypothesis:
Can sleep deprivation cause an increase in anxiety within medical students?
Purpose of the study is to find a correlation between sleep deprivation and anxiety within Medical students
Prediction:
Sleep deprivation will cause a significant increase in anxiety of medical students
Sleep disorders are particularly increasing in students as they face multiple stressors such as academic overload, constant pressure to succeed, and concerns about the future that alter the quality of their sleep
Design:
Using an Observational cross-sectional study: (definition data are collected during a single brief time period) during an academic year. To use questionnaires to find results.4 questionnaires would be faced to faced administered to students after obtaining written consent
The 4 questionnaires were to measure their sleep quality and assessing Anxiety levels.

Found to be the most common and effective questionnaires used in studies of sleep and anxiety
The insomnia Severity index (ISI)
Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)
Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS)
Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7)
Methodology:
Questionnaire Survey
Personal data about age, gender and faculty were collected.

The ISI
Is a 7-item self-report questionnaire.

Assessing the nature, severity, and impact of insomnia.
The evaluated domains are:
Severity of sleep onset
Sleep maintenance
Early morning awakening problems
Sleep dissatisfaction
Interference of sleep difficulties with daytime functioning
Perception of sleep difficulties by others
Distress caused by the sleep difficulties.

A 5-point Likert scale was used to rate each item (0 to 4 where 0 indicates no problem and 4 corresponds to a very severe problem), yielding a total score ranging from 0 to 28. The total score was interpreted as follows: absence of insomnia (0-7); sub-clinical (mild) insomnia (8-14); moderate insomnia (15-21); and severe insomnia (22-28).
The PSQI
Is a 19-items questionnaire evaluating sleep quality and disturbances
The first four items are open questions, whereas items 5 to 19 are rated on a 4-point Likert scale.
Individual items scores yield seven components:
Sleep disturbance
Overall sleep quality
Sleep latency
Duration of sleep
Daytime dysfunction due to sleepiness
Sleep efficiency
Need for medicines to sleep
A total score, ranging from 0 to 21, was obtained by adding the seven component scores.
Some studies stated that a score < 5 suggests a good sleep quality.
The ESS
Is a self-administered questionnaire with eight questions
Each participant rated on a 4-point scale (0-3) his general level of daytime sleepiness, or the average sleep propensity in daily life. The total ESS score was the sum of eight item-scores and ranged between 0 and 24. The higher the score, the higher is the person’s level of daytime sleepiness, with significant sleepiness when the score was ; 10 [24, 25].
GAD-7
Is a 7-item instrument that assesses generalized anxiety severity.

Each item was scored 0 to 3, providing a 0 to 21 severity score (0-4: normal; 5-9: mild anxiety; 10-14: moderate anxiety and 15-21: severe anxiety
Assessment of anxiety:
Studying anxiety levels after periods of sleep deprivation
In the case of total sleep deprivation only anxiety assessments acquired after 24h of lack of sleep were extracted.

In the case of repeated measures, the first and the last available measures were always extracted; but intermediate assessments were only extracted if multiples of 12 (e.g., 36h, 48h).

Operational Definitions:
Sleep deprivation: sleeping less than the required amount of 8 hours before said time to wake up or class start
A lack of sleep, which included total sleep deprivation (complete absence of sleep)
Partial sleep deprivation (deprivation of one specific sleep stage, such asREM sleep)
Sleep restriction (reduction in total time of sleep)
Sleep fragmentation (intermittent awakenings through the sleep period).

Taking account for the loss of sleep we also define insomnia
Insomnia: the inability to sleep
Anxiety: an overwhelming feeling of stress during upcoming tests or assignments as well as amount of course load
Subjects:
Randomly picking students under 3 faculties
Medicine, Pharmacy and Dentistry
Criteria:
Inclusion: 18yrs and above and willingness to participate
Exclusion: under 18yrs and presence of a chronic disease and history of
Students were randomly selected
For each of the studying the practice randomly selecting 1 male and female
Studying the entirety of one semester
Breaking it down from the beginning of the term to the midterm approaching and to final examinations
Ethical Considerations:
Informed consent